PREGNANT women can be incredibly irritating. Those of us who have never given birth sometimes feel annoyed beyond belief by all manner of preciousness emanating from someone with child.

Not one MP in the Commons gave up their seat for pregnant Lib Dem Jo Swinson [GETTY]

Just what kind of a people have we become who can’t even give up a seat for a pregnant woman?

Wafting around in a cloud of aromatherapy they have special needs we all have to kowtow to apparently and frankly if there is anything to bring out my uncharitable side it’s a woman making a song and dance because she’s about to be delivered of child. That said the story of Victoria Poskitt is quite beyond belief.

Aged 40 and five months pregnant she was taken ill on a train but no one would give up their seat for her. She was forced to sit on the floor. I have some sympathy for the train company, which wouldn’t let her into First Class – you make one exception and an avalanche follows – but what of her fellow passengers? I don’t believe that most people would see a heavily pregnant woman in distress without at least one of them being prepared to give up their seat.

Just what kind of a people have we become who can’t even give up a seat for a pregnant woman? How selfish, self-obsessed and downright unpleasant are we all these days?

Perhaps we should expect no less. No MP gave up their seat for the Equalities Minister Jo Swinson in the House of Commons and while I would normally be in favour of leaving Lib Dems standing in this case she was seven months gone.

Not that she protested herself of course because typical Lib Dem that she is she said it would have been “sexist” for some fat oaf of an MP to dislodge himself.

No it wouldn’t, it would have been polite and an indication he was capable of thinking beyond his next expenses claim. It is common human decency to try to help if anyone is in difficulty and that includes above all a woman with child. Anyway it’s in the interests of us all.

A few decades hence God willing Victoria’s baby will be paying the taxes that go towards funding my state pension. For that if nothing else she deserves a comfortable chair.

THEY are not like thee and me on Planet Celeb, are they? Sharon Stone has admitted to getting overwrought about her appearance.

At last, I thought – even one of the world’s most beautiful women has body issues, just like the rest of us.

Then I looked closer: “I looked a little like Anna Nicole Smith with a tiny waist, big boobs and a big butt,” moaned Sharon. “Everywhere I went men went insane over my va-va-voom body. I just wanted to die.” Must have been a nightmare, poor love.

It would be wrong to destroy Palace ivory

PRINCE WILLIAM is an admirable man but he is totally wrong to say he wants to destroy Buckingham Palace’s ivory collection.

Those pieces come from a different age with different mores and should be respected as such. This is exactly the attitude the Taliban took when destroying 2,000-year-old Buddhas in Afghanistan and Mao Tse-Tung took towards thousands of years of Chinese history when he demolished untold numbers of priceless artefacts.

The ivory trade should be stopped but don’t destroy the remnants of another era. Times change.